But according to Gartner, a total of 1.97 million Windows phones were sold during Q2 2016, which would mean that Microsoft's hardware partners sold almost 800,000 handsets, or nearly 40% of the platform's total sales (compared with just 100,000 sales during the previous quarter). Could that mean that Microsoft's strategy is working?

The only platform doing worse than Windows is BlackBerry, with sales of BB OS devices falling to just 400,000, or 0.1% share, from 1.15 million / 0.3% a year earlier.

Overall, smartphone sales across all platforms rose by around 4% to 344.36 million YoY, and the biggest winner was Android. Sales of Android smartphones rose to almost 297 million units, pushing its market share up to 86.2%, from 82.2% a year earlier, and 84.1% in the previous quarter.

Gartner's Roberta Cozza attributed this in part to Google's efforts to keep improving its operating system. "Google is evolving the Android platform fast, which allows Android players to remain at the cutting edge of smartphone technology," she said. "Facing a highly commoditized smartphone market, Google's focus is to further expand and diversify the Android platform with additional functionalities, like virtual reality, enabling more-intelligent experiences and reach into wearables, connected home devices, in-car entertainment and TV."

Android enjoyed strong demand for lower-end and mid-range phones in emerging markets, but it was a good quarter for flagships too, with global sales of high-end handsets up by 6.5%.

However, Apple remains the world's second largest handset vendor with a considerable buffer between it and Huawei in third place, with 30.67 million sales and 8.9% share. Samsung is still the biggest by a considerable margin, with 76.74 million sales and 22.3% share, up around 0.5% YoY.

Oppo in particular enjoyed huge success last quarter, more than doubling its sales YoY from 8.07 million / 2.4% to 18.49 million / 5.4%.